DOCOVA: The first legit successor to Lotus Notes?

So it's 2017 and despite plenty of
marketing hype we're still waiting for Sharepoint or any other major vendor
product to prove a worthy replacement for the power and flexibility of
Lotus Notes as an application platform. There are countless examples of
business-critical Lotus Notes and Domino apps that are still chugging away
even after million$ have been spent on failed migrations (or hopefully
because those millions remain wisely unspent). The reason for this is simple:
Notes is special.

You see, there are two types of people
in the (IT) world: Those that truly, deeply, get Notes. And everybody else.
If you were expecting a successful migration of a complex Notes app and
didn't hire someone in the first group to help, you were probably disappointed.
If you were expecting a completely new platform to come along and truly
replace Notes itself, you should likewise expect folks from the first group
to build it. And maybe they just did.

If you yourself are among the group
of IT folks who truly understand the capabilities and usefulness of Lotus
Notes then you've probably bumped into John Ryan or Gary Walsh from DLI.Tools
(aka Docova). As third-party tool vendors DLI.Tools has been a force in
the Lotus Community for decades. These guys get it, better than you and
I in all likelihood. The Docova product has for years been a sensible upgrade
from a Quickr or Domino.Doc installation. Now with the release of version
5 of Docova, they are aiming a little higher. As John recently put it on his blog introducing the new release:

So, why doesn’t
anybody out there have a true end-to-end migration solution for Notes applications
like DOCOVA? Two reasons, first, because it’s difficult. Second,
because it’s difficult.

Companies don’t want to process re-engineer their Notes applications on
a “new” software platform because it can’t do what Notes did. They
need better. That’s why we stepped into this arena.

I highly recommend checking out the
Docova blog where John is currently up to part 7 in a 17-partMigrate
Notes to DOCOVA Blog Series. You will also find links to
a short youtube demo video that will probably blow you away. Watch this
space...

Disclaimer

This site is in no way affiliated, endorsed, sanctioned, supported, nor blessed by Lotus Software nor IBM Corporation, nor any of my past or future clients (although they are welcome to do so). The opinions, theories, facts, etc. presented here are my own and in no way represent any official pronouncement by me on behalf of any other entity.